CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2025

Code hygiene is important. One or two "code smells" that appear in the course of solving a problem is expected, but if they are not addressed as part of a followup step, the smells can build up and invite all sorts of unexpected activity.
One major code smell is the overuse or misuse of local variables in OpenTofu projects. Oftentimes, these are both difficult to interpret on their own and used in composition with other local variables, compounding obscurity.
In this lightning talk, we will present a series of common scenarios describing the use of local variables. We will review examples both that are appropriate and those that are dizzyingly dense to disentangle, including alternative approaches or ways to mitigate obfuscation, as well as how these phenomena arise.